A Decided Genius
by rabidsamfan
Summary: When the subject is Watson even Sherlock Holmes needs someone to confide in.
1. The Journal of Mary Morstan, part 1

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n.b. I am, for the moment at least, using a slightly modified version of Mr. Frankland's cranky chronology, a copy of which may be found at http members aol com mfrankland chronology htm (add punctuation as appropriate). The additional appearances of the Lauriston Garden mystery in monographs which have been lost to posterity are mine own.

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_I think she is one of the most charming young ladies I ever met and might have been most useful in such work as we have been doing. She had a decided genius that way... -- from_ The Sign of Four

_That was always the way. Folk who were in grief came to my wife like birds to a lighthouse. -- from _The Man With the Twisted Lip

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**Excerpts From the Journals of Mary Morstan --** _rediscovered by rabidsamfan, with apologies to Dr. Doyle_

**Saturday: September , 1887**

Well, it seems I am not to be rich after all. The treasure is at the bottom of the Thames, and the mysteries are solved. But things have turned out not so badly, for John returns my regard, and has asked me for my hand in marriage. I told him yes, should we both still feel the same after a week's rest.

**Sunday: September , 1887****  
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John and his friend came with me to visit Thaddeus Sholto, newly freed from suspicion but still shaken by being forced to attend his twin's funeral in chains, to tell him of the loss of the fortune, and to explain how it came into his father's hands. Mr. Sholto, bless him, believes that my father meant to have the treasure divided with Small and the others, as had been agreed, and lays all blame for the tragedy upon his own father's foolish greed. But he's had a bad shock, and was very glad to have John listen to his heart again and prescribe a convalescent diet and a week's bedrest. There is something quite reassuring about the dear doctor, but I can see that his friend Holmes is concerned for him, for the strain of last night's adventure was clear in the pronounced increase of his limp. I sent them both back to Baker Street in a separate cab, pleading exhaustion on my own behalf, and made John promise that he would get a good night's rest now that the danger is past. I said as much to Mr. Holmes as well, but I note that he was careful not to assent and merely observed that his chances for uninterrupted sleep were far better since the doctor would not be sitting up all night writing up his notes.

**Monday: September , 1887**

I have had a visitor. Sherlock Holmes. He has told me a great deal, and I write it down now, as well as I can remember it, so as to try to think it all through.

He came in the early afternoon, unannounced and alone, and asked leave of Mrs. Forrester to speak to me privately. She granted us use of the little parlor for the day, and ordered the fire lit that we might be comfortable. I could tell from his face and manner that he had not rested well or much since our last meeting, and when asked admitted that he had not yet had luncheon. He accepted the offer of tea and cakes -- indeed, Mrs. Forrester gave him no choice in the matter -- and we retired to the chosen room, speaking of inconsequential things, the weather, and a concert he had been to, until the girl had brought the tray and departed again. But once she had gone he took a sip and steeled himself to his purpose.

"I am not quite certain that I am doing the right thing," he said. "I am not... I depend on Watson's judgment when it comes to women, far more than perhaps I should. The reason why is unimportant, but the fact remains that I have no clue as to how you will feel about what I have come to tell you -- and I am... concerned... that by bringing you into my confidence - and Watson's - I shall somehow dissuade you from listening to my friend with an open heart."

"I try always to listen with an open heart," I said. "And I do not think you need fear that I shall take anything that you tell me amiss about Dr. Watson, for I am certain it shall be the truth."

"But why did you beg a week to consider his offer?" Holmes asked, and although he tried to hide his distress I could see it in the set of his shoulders.

"Not for my own sake," I said. "But for his. He barely knows me -- just now I am the romantic heroine of a tragedy. In a week's time he might see more clearly. When he is rested." With some hesitation I added, "And well." Holmes had dragged John Watson over more than half London on my behalf - had risked his life in that dreadful chase on the river - and while I was sure that the good doctor had wished to be a part of the chase, I was not so certain that Holmes had been right in allowing him to go along.

Holmes groaned and covered his face for a moment with long hands. "It will take more than a week," said he, and then raised his eyes to meet mine. "Watson has not been truly well in all the time I've known him."

It must be confessed that my hands shook a little as I set my own teacup down. "And you fear that I will refuse to wed a sick man?" I asked. "You need not. I have known from the moment I met him that his health is not what it should be. But we must take happiness when we find it in this life, and relish it all the more if it is brief." I made myself smile. "No man is perfect, Mr. Holmes."

A corner of his mouth twitched in what would have been a wry smile in another man. "True enough." Restlessness overcame him and he got to his feet and strode over to gaze sightlessly at the knickknacks on the mantelpiece.

"Where _is_ Doctor Watson?" I asked, when he did not speak.

"Abed with a mild fever. Again." At my gasp Holmes turned. "But not alone. Our landlady, Mrs. Hudson, has him under her eye, and she is more than capable of dealing with him in this state."

"She has before, I take it."

"Yes." Holmes began to pace. "I am a poor sicknurse for anyone. I haven't the patience for it. Not while he's lucid, in any case." He ran a hand through his hair. "I am not telling this well."

"Perhaps if you began at the beginning..." I suggested.

Again that small quirk of a smile. The grey eyes looked upon me with more favor than I had seen before. "Very well," he agreed and settled back into his chair. He steepled his hands for a moment before speaking, whether in thought or prayer I could not say. But once he began the question was driven from my mind.

"I met Watson in January of '81, some months after the disastrous battle of Maiwand. I had, at that time, come to realize that my room in Regent Street was poorly placed and my landlord intolerable, and in my search for new quarters I had come across the home of Mrs. Horace Hudson, a woman newly widowed by a street accident, and looking to take lodgers to supplement her income. The location was ideal, but the rent which she required was beyond my purse, and I had said as much to a student I knew by the name of Stamford in the dissecting rooms at Barts. Later that day he brought Watson to me. I could see at a glance that he had been injured, and ill, for he was bone thin -- even more so than he is now. I deduced from his bearing and his sunburn that he had been in Afghanistan, and wounded there, but as I was all alight with a chemical discovery I had just made, I did not think to inquire further. When I found that he would be willing to go halves with me on the rooms in Baker Street I gave him a list of such small vices as could not be concealed from a roommate of whatever intelligence, and he returned the favor, adding that he had a different set of vices when he was well. But as he was in England to recuperate and be re-evaluated for service in the Army, I did not think that the second set of vices would matter. I made certain that the rooms would be secure for at least six months, by which time I hoped to have completed my studies and sufficiently established my practice as a consulting detective so as to no longer require a roommate. In any case, as I had never shared quarters with anyone who could tolerate me for more than a year I had every expectation that our association would be brief.

"You will understand my frustration when I tell you that Watson's natural reticence was a thorn in my youthful arrogance. I expected to know everything there was to know about the man from observation and deduction within a week, but by the end of that week I knew little more than I had after our first meeting. Part of that, it must be confessed, was our differing schedules. I was on my best behavior, retiring early and rising with the sun, while Watson seldom set his books or his journal aside before one or two in the morning and as a consequence almost never breakfasted before luncheon. Few of his possessions had survived his misadventures to satisfy my curiosity -- the silver ring he wears on his right hand, a smattering of medical instruments, and his service revolver, nothing more. He had two suits, both made in India, and a uniform that was clearly a piecemeal, assembled, I assumed, from whatever items had fallen into the hands of the hospital which outfitted him for his medical review. Everything else he had with him was newbought, and had yet to lose the patina of the shop. I had learned but one thing, and that I had suspected from the start."

He paused, and I knew that he would need a prompt from me to continue. "And that was?"

"That he was an addict."


	2. The Journal of Mary Morstan, part 2

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"An addict?" I echoed, putting a hand to my throat.

"_Was_ I say, not _is_," Holmes hastened to reassure me. "He threw off the incubus long ago. Indeed, he has not willingly taken any kind of opiate for some years now, at no little cost."

"His leg?" I ventured.

He nodded. "Watson told you that his leg was wounded in Afghanistan. That is not so. He was shot here in London, not four months past. But I am getting ahead of myself." He composed himself again, hooding his too expressive eyes as he considered the past. "You must not think that I in any way thought less of Watson because of his recourse to morphine. He was frequently in pain, between his shoulder and the wretched weather, and I thought it only logical for him to seek such relief as he could find. I myself had discovered already that I could blunt my own fits of melancholy with a careful combination of the right chemicals. By temperament and heritage I am doomed to swing from high energy to utter lassitude not infrequently. I use both morphine and cocaine as a myopic man uses glasses, to supplement the weaknesses of my own body. But Watson... he is not made that way. His melancholy was a product of his experiences and it was exacerbated by his situation. The drug brought him sleep, but it did not ease his nightmares."

I nodded, but said nothing. Holmes' admission had only confirmed to me that he was himself not truly sober. I suspect it was with cocaine that he had bolstered his courage before coming, as morphine, in my experience, renders the user sleepy and unsociable. But the man before me was fully alert, and seemed almost compelled to speak. It would be my task to listen.

"We danced around each other for three weeks more, each on our best behavior as new acquaintances must be. In exchange for Watson's consideration over my use of our sitting room as a place of business I endeavored to play his favorite airs on my violin, and when chance threw us together over a meal we began in a small, desultory way to exchange our views. Quickly, I came to the realization that Watson, with his conversational gambits, was in his own way as curious about me as I had become curious about him." For the first time a genuine smile flickered across the long face, as Holmes seemed to see in the silver tea service a memory that amused him. "Unfortunately I was, at the time, enamored of a rather foolish theory concerning the capacity of the human memory, and so confounded my poor Watson almost as thoroughly as I was confounding myself."

"Watson had no callers, and no correspondence save a laggard bill sent round by an apothecary from his time at the hotel. If it had not been for his books and his meals I doubt he would have had reason to get up in the morning. It was a bitter winter, cold and grey, and he could not even walk to the lending library to refresh his stock of books unless the weather was exceptionally fine. His study of me remained inobtrusive, but what else had he to fill his hours? On an impulse, late in February, I invited him to accompany me to the gymnasium, pointing out that I must pay for the cab whether it held one or two, that we could both avail ourselves of a Turkish bath once I had done with my training, and that in any case the gym would be warmer than our sitting room with the wind set in that particular quarter. To my surprise he agreed, and once he had observed my skills at boxing and singlestick, made a tidy profit over my fencing match, on the strength of which he bought us both dinner at Claridge's." This time the smile which came to him remained in place. "I learned more about Watson at that dinner than I had in a month's time, and I laughed more than I had in three years. The ring lost a fine fighter to that bullet in his shoulder and I gained a bonny coach, for he had much to say about what he had observed and a host of stories about other fighters he had known. With a topic of mutual interest we talked for hours, until he grew quite fumble-tongued with wine and fatigue. In spite of overstraining his injury whilst trying to demonstrate a move to me, he slept that night for the first time without once crying out."

"Soon afterwards I found a way to introduce him to my plan to become the world's first consulting detective, and luckily enough that same day a problem presented itself which convinced him that the plan was feasible." Holmes' smile grew rueful. "Indeed after the ridicule I had withstood as I undertook my studies, Watson's encouragement and praise were a much needed balm to my vanity. In short order it became unthinkable to embark upon a case without asking Watson if he cared to join me, and as the weather improved he did so fairly often. His stamina improved markedly between fresh air and exercise, although his digestion remained delicate from the enteric fever and his appetite remained low. He had some hope of passing his medical review, however, and returning to his duties, and even spent some time with me in the dissecting rooms at Bart's trying to learn how to practice his trade one-handed. He was not entirely successful, no more than I was myself at attracting sufficient income with my new profession, and I will confess to being pleased when the Army refused to take him back come autumn. Being kept on half-pay was a blow, however, and as the weather turned for the worse Watson's dependence on morphine grew more pronounced. Just before Christmas I was summoned to the continent to solve a pretty puzzle, and although my client would have cheerfully allowed me a second fare, Watson begged off, saying he had business of a personal nature to attend to.

"I returned just after the New Year triumphant, to find Watson quite ill. He rallied within a day or two, however, and seemed his old self. I believe now that he had attempted to cease using the morphine in my absence, and resumed it upon my return so as to be able to continue our pleasant habit of visiting the gymnasium, where I availed myself of his skills as coach and he took such exercise as he could comfortably manage. In an attempt to supplement his income and keep his medical knowledge from atrophying he took to spending a few hours each week at the Fleet clinic, and offering his services as locum to established practitioners. The strain on him told however, and in his exhaustion one night he confused his words - much as he did the other night, with us - and the error nearly cost a woman's life."

"The shotgun and the tiger cub," I recalled.

"And the strychnine and the Castor oil," Holmes said. "I warned Sholto against accepting that advice. I put it down to the late hour, and God knows I hope that that is all that was the cause."

"What else could it be?" I asked.

"Watson blames these occasional confusions on the lasting effects of the morphine." Holmes flung himself across the room and began to pace, shaking his head. "But it _cannot_ be. The pattern is all wrong. He stumbles when he is excessively tired, or has put a strain on his old wound, not when... " He stopped to pinch the bridge of his nose. "It hardly matters. Watson was convinced, and so was Sir Julian Emberley, who runs the Fleet clinic. He barred Watson from practicing there unsupervised until such time as Watson had made a choice between medicine and morphine after that incident, and so drove Watson into even worse state. He could not honestly act as locum when he had been told his skills would not even benefit the miserable wretches who go to the Fleet."

"What did you do?" I wondered.

"What could I do?" Holmes said. "The third night I found him sitting with his revolver in his hand before the sitting room fire at three in the morning he nearly put a bullet through me, so I had an excuse to lock it away, but by then he knew that my own house was glass -- he had seen me melancholy more than once indeed, and tolerated it in silence. My cure has always been work, and that had been denied him. And then, by chance, I received a narrative from America which greatly increased our understanding of the first case we had shared and Watson was reminded that he had promised to write the matter up. I told him that I meant to hold him to that promise, and had the boots fetch round a fresh notebook of the kind Watson favored and a store of ink and nibs."

"He had always kept a daily record, although in his despair even that practice had fallen aside -- but his journals are his most valued possessions, and the loss of his diaries on the Northern Frontier appears to have stung him harder than the loss of his health. He hoards them like jewels, going so far as to lock them away in his bank once they are filled, lest some catastrophe overtake him again. To write out the case seemed a natural outgrowth of what he had always done. But this was a new kind of writing for him, and he stumbled at it at first. Somehow the suggestion was made -- I do not remember quite how -- that he begin by writing down the sort of story he told so well, about people he had met or small incidents in his career. By the time that the notebook had been labelled "Reminiscences" and was a quarter full, he had pulled himself somewhat free of the slough of despond, and as my studies ended and my fame in police circles spread, he and I found ourselves increasingly occupied with my work."

"Reminiscences?" I murmured, and could not help but look toward the bookshelf, where a certain pamphlet was set crooked to its fellows.

Holmes followed my gaze and went to pluck it from the shelf. "A Study in Scarlet..." He made a small, disdainful sound and passed it to me. "It was barer of unnecessary romance in the original, I promise you," he said. "But Watson's literary agent thought it needed that ungainly American passage and so he inserted it in the reprint."

"But you have a copy of his 'Reminiscences'," I pressed, for I very much wanted to read anything I could find about John. I could feel my cheeks darken.

"I shall send it to you," Holmes promised, with a laugh. "Although I warn you, the paper is very fragile. The printer in Calcutta went to little expense."

"Calcutta?" I blinked.

He nodded. "I am getting ahead of myself again," he said. He sat and drank off the last of his neglected tea. "As I was saying, Watson accompanied me on several cases, and continued to coach me whenever I needed a fit of exercise, which often meant running alongside me. In many ways his health improved, but twice more when I returned from a solitary excursion I found that he had been ill in my absence. And then in early March of '83 he and I were caught in a late snow on the high fells of Yorkshire as we hunted a murderer. It was a blinding storm, and I slipped on a traverse and fell, breaking both bones just above my left wrist. Watson did what he could, and we stumbled on. No doubt we would have frozen to death if it weren't for a shepherd who found us and took us to his hut. It was a tiny, barren thing, but weathertight, and the shepherd was able to provide us with nearly everything we required." He studied his empty cup very carefully. "Everything but morphine."


	3. The Journal of Mary Morstan, part 3

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He fell silent. I waited for a time, to see if he could continue without prompting, but he seemed to me to be trapped within his thoughts, and at last I rose to refill his cup from the cooling pot. "How long were you there?"

"Near a fortnight," he said softly, and then dragged his eyes up to meet mine. "If you would be a doctor's wife," he said harshly, "you must be prepared for the depths to which pain and despair can drive even a proud man." But then his gaze fell again, and his voice was carefully back under control when he added. "I was not."

"You were hurt yourself," I offered, although I knew that his own injury was not what still troubled him now.

"Had I not been, Watson would have been able to keep his slender supply of the drug for his own needs," Holmes said bitterly. "He always carried a few doses with him, and his hypodermic, lest we be delayed, back then. But of course he had used some of it in the days before the storm, and he used quite a bit to blunt the pain as he set my broken arm straight. The last dose he saved to ease my way into sleep that night, although he did not tell me that it was the last." He stood and went again to the mantelpiece, staring down at the fire for a moment before bending to mend it with a fresh shovel of coals from the scuttle. "Watson knew what would happen, of course," he said, as he kept himself too busy to look back at me. "He had me promise that I would not give into any demands he might make for morphine, not even if it seemed to mean his life -- and he promised me that it would not; that Providence had granted him an occasion to free himself, and would see him through. I have studied the literature since and learned that it is rare for a man who is otherwise in good health to die of morphine withdrawal, but..." he paused, closing his right hand into a trembling fist for a long moment before laying it open again and wrapping it around his left wrist, as if to ease the old injury. "The broken arm prevented me from being of any real assistance. It was Ben -- the shepherd -- who tended Watson's needs."

Having made that admission he sprang again to his feet and bestowed a too-bright smile upon me. "In any case it was all for the best. Watson recovered, we caught our murderer, and returned to Baker Street."

God only knows what he left out of his narrative, leaping past the pain like that. Had it been me I should have been secretly glad and yet ashamed to be spared the task of nursing a friend in such straits. What it had cost Holmes I could not tell. Clearly the wound was not yet lanced. "And you?" I asked. "What of _your _needs?" He looked a question to me, so I clarified. "You said that you too used morphine. Did you not miss it also?"

"My use was only occasional, so the deprivation did me no harm." He dismissed the matter with a small gesture. "Even Watson agreed that I showed little sign of addiction. But I did not use it again for many months. Not until after he'd gone."

"Gone?"

"Yes. Back to the Army. He passed his review in August. Without the drug his appetite had been restored, and he put on a stone thanks to Mrs. Hudson's careful cooking. Stamford helped him devise a means of operating with a partner, to compensate for his arm - although it had regained some strength by then it still troubled him when he had to make extended use of it - and Sir Julian at last approved of him again for time at the Fleet, which allowed him to regain confidence in his medical skills. He got to Calcutta just in time for the cholera epidemic." Holmes' sour tone told me volumes.

"Not cholera too!" I exclaimed. Had any ill-luck spared poor John?

"Yes, cholera too," Holmes growled. "Exhaustion and overwork laid him prey to it and for a second time the Army despaired of his life. It was then, I believe, that one of his fellow physicians rifled his dispatch box and found his "Reminiscences". He read it in search of some trace of Watson's next of kin, and though he did not find what he was looking for, thought it good enough to publish as it stood. Watson, remembering his promise to me to tell the world of the Lauriston Gardens case, and thinking he would never live to polish the tale finer, agreed, and a small edition of one hundred copies was struck, one copy of which was sent me. Watson has his own copy of course, but the rest were purchased for the edification of the sons of Sahibs by the benefactor of a school in Lucknow. From there some copies came into the hands of the boys' fathers and their fathers' friends and within a year I began to receive callers who knew nothing of me except what they had read in Watson's book."

"Only a hundred copies?" I said.

"Yes, and poorly made at that. I doubt a single one will last into the next century," Holmes shook his head. "Watson will never countenance another edition, I'm sure. He finds the prose painfully amateurish now. But he had included three examples of my work, and there's no denying that they made an impression. My brother Mycroft was very amused to find me famous in so roundabout a fashion."

"And Dr. Watson?" I asked, nettled to think that the author might be less famous than his subject.

"Sent to the highlands, to recover, once he was strong enough. To Simla, as physician to the dependents of the garrison. He spent some months there -- it was then that he went on that tiger hunt -- and would have been content to stay at that posting. But it was considered a ripe plum, and he was shouldered aside to make way for a man with better connections. It was back to Calcutta again, and this time his superior officer did not wait for him to become ill, but whisked him into a berth as a ship's physician on a troopship, thus guaranteeing that Watson would be exposed to every disease in every port on every misbegotten island and backwater colony the Empire commands."

I felt need the need of more tea. "Surely not!"

Holmes only nodded grimly. "The first time his ship was in Portsmouth he seemed well enough -- he came up to London with a box of cigars and cigarettes, carefully labelled, from every corner of the world he had visited knowing of my experiments with cigar ash, and we went to a concert and dinner together. The second time he sent the box by post, and when I would have taken the train down to meet him for a quiet supper, he refused me, pleading too much work. The third time - just this past November - I did not warn him, but waited on the dock for the ship to arrive."

"He must have been surprised to see you," I said.

"No more surprised than I to see him carried down the gangway on a stretcher."

"A stretcher. He was so ill that he had to be carried on a stretcher?"

To my surprise, Holmes smiled. "Not exactly. The ship had hit a storm just off the Pillars of Hercules and Watson had been knocked down a companionway by a seasick soldier who was trying to reach the rail. His foot caught in the ladder and his ankle was wrenched, putting a tear in the Achilles tendon." The smile faded away. "But he was thinner than I had ever known him -- a veritable scarecrow -- and his orderly, Nesbitt, came round our hotel that night for the express purpose of begging me to find some way to persuade Watson to resign his commission."

"It seems an odd request."

"The ship was due to sail again within a fortnight -- long before Watson's ankle would be fit for duty -- and Nesbitt would have to sail with the new ship's surgeon, leaving Watson to the untender mercies of some new subordinate who would not yet know how best to care for a sickly surgeon. He grew quite vociferous in listing his reasons why that would not do, and Watson overheard and dragged himself on his crutches out to argue his case for staying in the Army. An error as it turned out, for Nesbitt caught him out in three mistakes and said that if he would just take some of his own nostrums for pain he would not be so tired as to fall prey to confusion. At that point I thought it best to intervene. Watson would have to face a medical review over the ankle in six weeks and that would be time enough for him to make a decision. In the meantime he could take up residence in his old room in Baker Street." He cut his eyes at me for a moment, with an expression of satisfaction that was soon explained. "It was ... arranged... that Sir Julian would be on the medical board in London, and that irascible gentleman somehow convinced the other members of the panel that Watson's nearly healed ankle was deserving of a permanent pension. Watson he convinced by telling him that in all justice he should have had one for his shoulder, and in any case if Watson were in London, he might be free again to spend some hours at the Fleet."

"That was kind of you," I said, for I had no doubt that it was Holmes who had made the arrangements.

Holmes swept away the compliment with his long hand. "It gave Mrs. Hudson someone else to fuss over," he said. "Once Watson's ankle was sufficiently recovered he did once speak of striking out on his own, but she dissuaded him, saying that if she could put up with my Bohemian ways she could certainly put up with his convalescence. At Baker Street Watson could play the valetudinarian whenever the need came upon him, eat as much as he liked or as little, and sleep at all hours, for I was often called away on cases and he had the place to himself for weeks at a time. It seemed to suit him, for he soon began to look his old self, and by April he was content to find himself playing physician to my invalid in return."

"It was kind of her, too," I said. "But I cannot think that it was a simple matter to find yourself sharing rooms again when you had been on your own for so long."

"Oh, I had once tried to find a substitute roommate, when cases were thin on the ground. Poor fellow didn't last a week. But I was glad to have Watson back. He was more somber than I remembered, but still very good company and an excellent sounding board for my deductions. My one complaint is that he was as stiff-necked as ever. We have partnered in several matters since his return and his help has been invaluable, but he will not take a share of the fees, except to cover his own expenses. Still, he wishes to raise enough money to purchase a small practice in time, and when other avenues had failed him, a fellow doctor turned writer suggested that he publish that pamphlet on your table. It was not a great success, but Beeton's have chosen it to appear in their Christmas Annual, so I suppose that I shall have to grow accustomed to it. By June I thought us both well settled into our places once again." Despite the casual dismissal of his words, his manner was becoming more agitated. I swallowed my defense of the doctor's writing and watched instead as Holmes took yet another turn around the room. He stopped at last by the window and stared out into the fog. "And then I made an error -- a series of errors -- which have undone everything."


	4. The Journal of Mary Morstan, part 4

To say that his voice cracked on the words would be untrue, but there was something about it which changed and warned me that he had at last come to the heart of the matter. A flatness to the note, as if he were summoning the words through a long speaking tube which had its opposite end in some place he had no desire again to visit. This time I did not prompt him when he fell silent, knowing somehow that he had already crossed the Rubicon. Eventually he spoke again in the same unnatural tone.

"We had undertaken a task which had necessitated our being where we had no right to be, and witnessed a murder which, if I have any power in this world, will never be solved by the official forces. The man killed had ruined many lives -- his own was no loss, I thought -- but he had a network of supporters, some nearly as clever as he was himself. And as Watson and I had fled the scene one of those supporters had nearly caught Watson. When, a week later, someone took a shot at Watson and missed as he was out on a visit to a patient - a fellow soldier from Afghanistan whom he had met at the Fleet -- I thought the matters were connected, that he had been recognized. That was my first mistake. I forbade Watson to go out alone, which was the second. Danger has never deterred him. We argued the matter and in the end I had to be content with setting my Irregulars to keeping the doctor under a discreet watch whenever he ventured out of the flat. It was the one thing I did right. Watson knew of the surveillance of course, and resented it, but the boys were so proud to be his bodyguards he had not the unkindness to do more than make them promise should anything happen that they would not put themselves at risk too."

"I myself went in disguise to try to penetrate the tangled strands of the dead blackmailer's web. It was not easy work, which is the only excuse I can offer for my failure to do no more than skim the reports my young friends wrote out about how Watson was spending his time. One matter should most certainly have caught my attention: the funeral of the soldier whom Watson had been visiting when the attack took place. But I passed the matter over, knowing the man had been ill. That was my third mistake."

"In my defense I can say only that there were indeed rumors that I had been involved in the matter of the murder, and that some of the criminals I had crossed in the past were looking forward to my downfall. So much I had learned, but had still found no evidence that anyone had acted upon the suspicion, when one evening -- the 17th of June -- I came home to find a pile of telegrams from Wiggins, each one increasingly desperate."

I felt such a chill as I listened to his narrative as had never gripped me before. His face had gone still, betraying no more emotion than an automaton, but I suspected that the outward appearance of calm was as fragile as glass. For all that I wanted nothing more than to wrap my shawl tighter around me, I dared not move.

"Watson had met another veteran of Maiwand at the funeral, a man called Peters, who was nearly as destitute as the fellow who had died, and arranged to come and visit him. But on the day of the appointment Peters stepped out to fetch back a jug of beer for them to share and never returned. His wife was worried. Peters had fallen into opium addiction, and she never knew when the fit would take him. So Watson said he would track the fellow down and bring him home, but when he found Peters the man panicked and ran, leading him from one low dive to another. Watson tried to send a message home to me that he would be late, via Wiggins, but in that he underestimated the tenacity of the boy, who sent the telegram and then resumed his task, adding more messages as Watson and Peters delved deeper into the tangle of streets and canals that lie east of the Tower."

"But even Wiggins has his limits, and at last it had grown so late and dark, and the neighborhood so unsavory that, remembering his promise not to take unnecessary risks, he chose to wait in one of the telegraph stations for a reply. I sent one at once, and followed myself in a cab without bothering to throw off my disguise. Another error. If I had thought to divert to Lambeth and fetch Toby, to bring along one of Watson's shoes to give him a scent, it might have saved more time than was lost to the delay. As it was I sent Wiggins home in the cab and took up the trail on my own, dependent on witnesses in increasing states of intoxication. The one advantage I had was that Peters was a huge man, standing six foot and seven inches, and so noticeable even to the most impaired of persons."

"I had come several miles, and the bells were chiming three of the clock when I caught a glimpse of them just turning the corner a few streets ahead of me. There was no mistake. Peters towered a full head over Watson, and Watson I knew even by the flicker of the gaslight. They were stumbling with exhaustion, but they took to their heels at the crash of a slate from a rooftop, running like men pursued. I ran after them. Having come so close I had no desire to lose them again. But I had got so caught up in the chase that I had forgotten that I wore a false beard -- that Watson would not recognize me by sight. And they were being pursued. Had been chivvied, indeed, through alleys and in and out of public houses and opium dens by a series of "accidents" that Peters had good reason to believe were no accident at all."

"I found out later that it was not the first time he had been so persecuted. At least five men who had made the retreat at Maiwand with Watson had landed in the slums of London. Three were already dead, hounded to their graves, and Peters was determined to find the last of them, thinking him to blame. He'd been driven more than half mad already, and had hauled Watson along on his flight as hostage as much as ally until the truth of the sniping attacks made it clear that his madness had a basis in truth. By the time I caught up to them on a wharf by the river, Watson was convinced. He saw me coming, drew his revolver, shouted a warning, and fired."

I could not help drawing a startled breath. For a moment, Holmes seemed to remember that he was not speaking to himself alone. His head slanted towards me. "If he had meant to kill me, I'd be dead," he said, as if it were a reassurance, and then looked again into the fog and past. "No, he meant only to warn me off. The bullet went over my head. And then, to my utter dismay, the shot was answered by the crack of a rifle."

"Peters cried out and fell into a huddle on the ground. Watson made no sound, but moved between the fallen man and the danger, firing again, this time deliberately, at the roof of the factory beside me. I sought safety beneath the wharf. The tide was going out and there was space enough between the deck and the water for an agile man to make his way between the pilings. I tore the beard from my chin; called to Watson to let him know that I was coming to his aid. He was glad to see me, but we had no time to exchange tales."

"The man on the roof changed position and fired again. Watson fired back, trying to keep him from putting out his head while I persuaded Peters down into the nearest skiff. He was not badly hurt -- the bullet had only grazed his hand -- but he was near paralyzed with fear. Watson followed us, and we took to the river as quietly as we could, hoping that the low mist on the water might keep us from the marksman's eye. Watson and I each took an oar -- we used them like the paddles of a Red Indian canoe, one on each side. We were working our way into the main current of the river, when we disturbed a family of ducks that had been sleeping in the lee of a barge. The noise attracted another rifle shot. Peters began to babble and wail that it was the Ghazis, come all the way from Afghanistan to finish their murderous work."

"I tried to tell him it was nonsense, but Watson flatly contradicted me, saying it was a jezail rifle being fired without question, as plainly different to his ear as any two cigar ashes would be to my eye. He ordered Peters to silence and then rose to pass me his oar so as to have both hands free that he might deal with Peters's injury. At that moment the rifle spoke again. Watson was hit. He lost his balance and went overboard. I heard his head strike the gunwale as he fell."

I bade myself remember that John had survived whatever ordeal was still to come, folded my hands more tightly together to keep them from trembling. I would not, could not, interrupt this tale. But I closed my eyes, and saw beneath my lids the desperate night.

"In my haste to catch Watson before he could sink beneath the black water I lost both oars. Peters was of no help. He scrambled to get Watson's revolver from where it had fallen, and fired it until the hammer fell uselessly on empty chambers, before crumbling again. But by chance my weight and Watson's combined where I held onto him over the one side of the boat had raised the other side enough to act as a barrier to the next shot from the sniper. By the time he had managed to reload again the current had caught us and we were moving downstream with the tide. The next bullet hit the water several feet away. Another shot missed us entirely, and at that point I judged it safe to pull Watson back aboard."

"It took much longer than it should have. He'd been unconscious in my grasp, with only the cough that rid him of the river water he'd swallowed to reassure me that he still lived. But as I tried to raise him the pain made him flinch away and struggle, and it was all I could do to keep from dropping him. It was only once he was awake enough to understand that I could wrestle him into the belly of the boat, and even then he could not help but cry out, drawing yet another bullet from the distance. Peters tried to muffle him, having finally understood that the sniper on the shore was shooting more by sound than sight. I think he would have smothered Watson if I hadn't struck him aside."

"Watson felt the danger too, and God knows he tried to keep his silence. But each small movement brought him fresh pain, and his blood was pooling in the bottom of the boat. I tried to see how badly he was hurt, but even the lightest touch on his leg meant agony."

"And so I made the worst mistake of all. I broke my promise."


	5. The Journal of Mary Morstan, part 5

My eyes flew open. Holmes was so pale I thought he might faint, his face so still it might have been carved out of wax and put on display at Madame Tussaud's. He did not protest when I rose and took him by the arm to lead him back to his seat by the table, merely dipped into his pocket for a morocco-leather case to hand to me once he was settled. I took my own place and opened it. Inside lay a hypodermic and two glass phials, stoppered with plugs of india-rubber. The clear liquids in them were half-hidden by yellowing labels, pasted on askew. 'Cocaine', said the one, and the other, 'Morphine.'

"I didn't ask his leave -- I just drew the dose and injected it through the cloth of his trouser leg. In moments he was insensible, quiet and shivering. I made Peters forfeit his coat and between us we stripped the wet clothing off of Watson and bundled him up again in the heavy wool. Peters was better with something to do. He had a scarf he offered too, to hold my handkerchief in place over the wound in Watson's leg. I remember that I heard the call of the ferryman at Woolwich but I could not tell how much time had passed and I kept silent, letting the tide and the river take us and hoping it would bring us out of range of the rifle. I had not slept the night before. Peters lay down alongside Watson -- bade me do the same on the other side to keep the cold of the wound from stopping his heart. A soldier's remedy, a comrade's warmth to stave off death. And it would keep anyone on the shore from knowing which skiff was ours, perhaps. I had no better plan, and so I took my place along the floorboards and closed my eyes, thinking it could not be long before the sun would rise, and I could beg help from some vessel in the river. I fell asleep. And when I woke we'd come aground on a bank of the hideous, foul mud that lies below Barking Creek and the Beckton Works."

I shuddered, remembering all too clearly the reports which had been in the newspapers after the _Princess Alice_ had been sunk in those dangerous waters in 1878. Over six hundred had drowned, and even the survivors had been burned by the befouled, acid river. All the sewage of North London went into the river at Beckton, and although there had been reforms since that tragedy I have had the misfortune to smell the river at low tide in that vicinity in high summer more than once. Mud was the least of what must have held that skiff.

Holmes went on. "There was a waterman waiting for us to rouse, his own boat still safely beyond the foreshore. He chanted 'Rub a dub dub' at us and called us drunken fools until he saw the blood upon my shirt. That sobered him, quick enough, and he warned me not to step out into the mud if I did not wish to be stuck in it or sink to China. We were mere yards from the river, and no greater distance to the bank, but he assured me that not even the mudlarks dared venture out on the sludge and slime where we had lodged. A few birds made their way across the new-revealed expanse, but even they, I noted, had feet discolored and distorted by their choice of homes. Our best hope, he said, was to wait for the tide to return and free us. The river was still falling -- it would be hours yet -- and Watson's leg had swollen to a hideous proportion. Already he was beginning to shift and groan restlessly. We had no water -- nothing fit to drink but the brandy in my flask. It would not do. I told the waterman so, and asked him to find some way of bringing Watson to shore."

"As the sun rose higher and the day grew warm, the watermen and his cronies argued about how best to rescue us. Peters had roused, despite his exhaustion, and watched hungrily as I dosed Watson a second time to keep the pain at bay. I could see by his yellowed eyes and trembling that he was deeply enthralled to poppy, and after the strains of the previous night his addiction had him tight within its grasp. His hand was inflamed, too, from the untreated wound where the bullet had kissed it, but he did not ask for relief." Holmes reached across the table and ran his finger along each of the phials in turn, so delicately and gently that the touch seemed almost a caress. "I had more morphine than cocaine then -- I seldom need the former unless my brain is racking itself to pieces against too little to do -- but I wanted to reserve the morphine for Watson, having a better notion of how much to give him of that drug. Peters was so very large, and his tolerance for opiates increased by his use of them, it was a certainty that he would require far more morphine than the usual dose. I gave him the last of the cocaine instead, which gave him some ease. But he grew profanely garrulous, and recalled to mind the death of every poor soul that he had seen maimed and defiled and destroyed in the retreat at Maiwand. I should have hushed him, except that his voice was a comfort to Watson."

"A comfort?!" I exclaimed, the words pulled out of me in spite of myself.

Holmes looked up, as if surprised to see me there with him. For a moment he was quite at a loss for words and then he seemed to realize that he had said too much to leave the rest of the tale untold. "They were comrades," he offered. "Nothing Peters said was anything Watson did not already know. He had been there, seen it. Indeed the wound and the heat and the morphine had him thinking that he was back in Afghanistan again, for he called for water in Hindustani when he grew thirsty. Peters tended him as best he could. I was kept occupied by the watermen's attempts to pull our boat out of the mud and into the river."

Having broken my silence I fell back into asking small questions to encourage him. "Did it take very long?"

"Hours," Holmes shook his head with remembered frustration. "Three lines and two motor launches could not overcome the suction of the mud, and the growing crowd of meddlers and idlers ashore were of little help until a young constable named Hopkins turned up and suggested running a line above us from a ship in the river to the shore, that we might be moved in the manner of victims at a shipwreck or at the very least be sent some drink and antiseptic. A ship was found in the river whose Captain had practiced the technique, which again, of course, took time. But once Captain Escott had the _Pollyanna_ in position he took command. By nine o'clock we had been provided with supplies and by ten we were ashore and in a cart, headed for Baker Street. The boat, as I understand it, was not freed from the trap until nearly noon."

"And Dr. Watson?"

"Feverish and getting worse. There had been a third dose of morphine to keep him from knowing the rough handling required to get him ashore in the breeches buoy, though not even that saved him entirely from the sting of the carbolic we poured over his wound, and he had taken to calling for Murray, the orderly who had once saved his life. Whilst still waiting for rescue, I had had Hopkins send a telegram to Sir Julian and Sir Julian in turn had dispatched a young doctor named Agar to meet us along the way. He took my place in the cart and did what he could, lending me his horse so I could set into motion a hunt for the assassin who had so nearly cost us our lives."

"Did you find him?" I asked.

Holmes frowned. "Not straight away. I was able to locate Murray in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne -- like Watson he had begun as one of the Northumberland Fusiliers and had only transferred to the ill-fated Berkshires to follow his assigned officer -- but not until the next day. Peters and his wife and children I sent to Mycroft, to be hidden safely until the danger was past. I'd heard from Peters about the other men by then, and like him I thought it certain that there must be some connection to the retreat at Maiwand, and so endeavored to find the whereabouts every man who had survived the battle. That line of investigation proved fruitless, except in that Murray agreed to ask leave to come down to London to help guard Watson."

He smiled suddenly, and raised sparkling eyes to meet mine. "You shall like Murray, if ever Watson has the courage to introduce you. He is a tiny, ageless perfect Pict, all red hair and tattoos, a lifelong soldier who has taught more young officers their work than a dozen generals in his time. He had the mess I had made of Watson's sickroom cleared in a matter of moments, and had no more determined that I was forestalled in my investigation and waiting upon answers to the rest of my telegrams than he had me tipped into my own bed, the door locked against me, and the lamp removed so that I had nothing better to do than catch up my sleep."

I laughed, imagining his surprise at being overmastered. "You must have been glad to have him there."

"Oh, yes. Even delirious Watson knew Murray was there, and responded to him, as he hadn't to any of the rest of us. And Murray had a salve he'd learned of India which he used upon the wound. Sir Julian was indignant, at first, but there's no denying that from the time that Murray arrived Watson ceased to sink and the threat of amputation faded." I don't think Holmes even noticed my reaction to the words, so intent was he upon the memory. "The man is utterly immune to despair. Within a week he had Watson tottering into the sitting room to nap on the couch by the fire whilst Murray scandalized Mrs. Hudson with tales of their earliest acquaintance. Stamford thought that Murray's presence added to Watson's confusion, but even so it was well worth the cost."

Stamford's name I knew from the account I had read, at least. It was good to know that Dr. Watson's friends had rallied to him in his illness. But my heart had caught at the hint of John's straits. "His confusion? Did he not know Murray again?"

The shadow fell across Holmes's face once more. "He knew Murray. It was me he had forgotten."


	6. The Journal of Mary Morstan, part 6

"Amnesia?" And now it was to Holmes my heart went out. To have done so much and have it forgotten, and all those years of comradeship as well! I could scarce imagine such a blow.

He nodded curtly and drew the morocco case to his own side of the table, where he studied its contents blindly. "The fever, the knock on the head, the drug..." Again his expressive hands made as if to dismiss the matter. "At the time it was convenient, for it meant that I could pursue the case without distressing Watson by my absence. I had been unable to identify a suspect, but the pattern of the victims was clear enough. I located the last of the veterans living in Whitechapel and took his place -- made myself into bait for a trap. Hopkins and Lestrade helped me spring it, though it was three nights before the tiger came to the hunt."

"You caught the assassin? I saw nothing of a trial in the papers."

"Nor will you, for the man turned out to be quite mad. His name is Warburton, an Army officer whose nephew had followed him into service only to die with so many of his fellows. He blamed the survivors; sought them out looking for any hint of cowardice or vice, and then hounded the weakest of them into the river, or heart failure. He's in Bedlam now and I doubt he shall ever leave." Holmes propelled himself out of his chair again and began to walk the room. "I returned to Baker Street after several days to find that Sir Julian had convinced Watson that he must forgo the morphine again if he meant to recover his memories. 'Best to get the misery all over at once', he said, and Murray had agreed to it, for he knew he must inevitably return to his duties. But it was so soon... Too soon. The cure was very nearly worse than the disease."

"Did it work?" I asked, hoping to distract him from his increasing agitation.

"Yes," he spat, and then controlled himself sharply. "Yes," he said again, more calmly. "Yes. Thanks to Murray, yes. Although at the time..." He pressed his lips together and did not finish the thought. I could see the effort it cost him to take himself in hand once more. "A few evenings later Watson called for me, asking for his favorite air upon the violin. From then on his recovery has been slow, but steady. Although there are times when it seems that much of the past seven years are still lost to him, even now. Of the boat and the river he remembers nothing. Nothing at all."

I waited, silent, too appalled by the price that Holmes had paid for his decision to find words.

He steepled his hands again and rested his lips against them for a long moment, turning to the window and the fog once more. "As soon as it was certain that Watson would recover Murray departed, asking only for news to be sent him if there was need again. Stamford gratefully returned to his usual round, visiting only now and again to check on Watson's progress although he had come by nearly every day during the crisis. Sir Julian... Sir Julian called me aside and informed me that only a regular life could bring Watson back to his strength and prevent a relapse. That all the cravings Watson had learned to ignore had been reawakened, and would haunt him into falling if his friends did not stay on guard. That he did not believe that there was any chance that Watson would survive a third trip through hell." And now, at long last, his voice did crack. "All summer long I have refused any case which would take me out of Baker Street, taking only those few I could answer by correspondence alone. I have made every effort to keep regular hours, to amuse myself with my chemical researches and my books. The most exercise I've taken is to follow Watson once he began to venture out on his own."

"Do you not trust him?" I asked.

"With my life, yes. With morphine... no, not yet." He jerked himself away from the window and came over to tap on the phials in the Morocco case. "These both hold cocaine now. It is harmless enough, and it keeps away the melancholy. I've offered it to Watson, and got only a lecture in return. But it would ease his cravings."

"'A cat that has once sat on a hot stove won't sit upon a cold one either'." It is one of Mr. Forrester's favorite sayings, but it was new to Holmes for despite himself he almost laughed. Poor man, I think he has not been so close to tears since he was a small child, and had forgotten how strange that place between hope and fear can be. "What makes you sure that he has cravings?"

Holmes shrugged. "I saw it before, in '83. For some months after that shepherd's hut Watson would be occasionally overwhelmed with the old desire. The symptoms were obvious: a trembling in his hands, a restlessness in his legs, a running nose as if he had taken cold. I have known him to take to his bed to outwait the compulsion -- and I have known him to move like a man in a trance, seeking out drug and syringe, only to be rescued by a sudden noise or a great spasm of revulsion. He pawned his silver ring three weeks ago and then stood outside the apothecary shop for hours, unable to make up his mind to go in and make the purchase. It was only when the apothecary's assistant came out to put up the boards that Watson returned to the pawnbroker to redeem his pledge. Oh, yes, he has cravings." He turned away again and wrapped his arms around himself, holding tight against whatever compulsion it was he felt himself. "And that is why I have come to you. To make you understand why a week is much too long to wait if you truly want him. To make you understand why he will tell you no. To make you understand that it is all my fault." The last he said in a whisper, but I heard it clearly.

I got to my feet, calling upon whatever strength I could find. Holmes did not need hysterics from me. "I do not understand," I told him. "Why should he say me 'no'?"

"Is it not obvious?" Holmes said.

"Not to me." Although I had a glimmer, even as I said as much.

"He cannot keep you. He cannot keep any wife on his pension, not as he thinks one ought to be kept. He cannot afford to purchase a practice, and even if he could he cannot be a physician again and constantly in the presence of morphine, not now that I have awakened the demon once more. He _has_ no other means of income, no investments that ill-luck have not diminished to a trickle. I thought the treasure would sweep away all obstacles for him, but the treasure is lost. And that is my fault too, for I could have tried harder to find a way to catch Jonathan Small and his companion before they ever got onto the river." Holmes took himself to the fire again, began to mend it with short, sharp movements although it did not need mending.

Suddenly I felt like laughing. Holmes' reputation for infallibility was shattered beyond repair, and I thanked God for it. "The treasure was the worst obstacle of all," I told my visitor joyfully. "John would never have said a word to me if that box had been full."

Holmes turned to stare at me, the poker in his hand. "Truly?" he asked.

I did laugh then, so complete was his surprise. "Yes, truly," I said. "If he will not accept help from you by taking half the fee on a case, how on earth could he possibly wish to take money that he has not earned from me?"

Holmes sank to the floor, still gaping. "But I arranged that he should bring you the treasure!" he confessed.

"And he brought it to me with the look of a man on his way to the gallows," I said fondly, remembering how stiff and awkward John had been until our happy discovery. I must have looked quite smug, for Holmes suddenly gave a great shout of laughter and relaxed, shaking his head at me.

"You really do love him?" he asked, as if it were a wonder to him.

"With all my heart," I said, settling to the floor beside him as I would with one of my charges in such a conversation. He could not escape to pace and fret himself and leave me there so easily.

"Even after all I've told you? You take more of a chance than most women would. Stamford once said to me that he'd never met a man who was dealt a worse hand than Watson and deserved it less." His eyes searched my face, still looking for some sign, I think, of fear or distrust in me. But he would find none.

"I think him very lucky," I said. "To have survived so many perils is remarkable indeed. And I am certain that he has been most fortunate in his friends."


	7. The Journal of Mary Morstan, part 7

The color rose in his cheeks and he glanced into the fire. "I'm not sure he'll agree with you, once he recalls what happened." He swallowed hard, and added softly, "Although I'm not sure that his memory shall ever return, since that chase after Jonathan Small down to the same reaches of the river has not shaken it free."

"You meant it to!" I realized. "You took him on the river at night again deliberately."

Holmes nodded. "Yes," he admitted. "He had you to turn to. Between the river and the treasure I thought to make it a clean break. I should lose him in any case."

The light from the flames showed up the lines on his face and the smudges under his eyes more clearly and I realized that a good part of Holmes' distress must come from exhaustion, and no wonder, if he had had no one with whom he could share his fears. But this fear at least could be dispelled. "In thinking so, you do him the only wrong in all this coil. You saved his life, and risked your own to do so. I cannot imagine him to be so monstrous as to be ungrateful. The promise you made in Yorkshire was for that time, and place only. Last June the danger was closer and driven by a force far less beneficent than Providence."

"I could have given him the cocaine," Holmes countered, turning again to face me, and then he made a rueful moue. "Theoretically, at least. I have read of it being used as an anesthetic, although not as an analgesic."

It was my turn to brush the consideration aside. "Better to use the drug you knew would work."

"I could have stayed awake and kept us from going aground."

I dismissed that as well. "If you could have, you would have."

"I could have told him what happened." His chin was up, his eyes defiant. Having owned his faults he was ready to defend them.

But I only smiled. "Ah, now there you have me." But I could see why he had not. I reached over to touch his arm. "Now, tell me what happened last night."

"How do you know anything happened last night?" he said, not as a delay, I think, but because he wished to know how I was thinking.

"Something precipitated this visit," I told him. "Something which prevented you from getting the sleep you clearly needed even yesterday, and given that you felt a need to come and tell me of your concerns I think it must be that you saw Dr. Watson attempt to use morphine again."

He shook his head. "Nothing quite that desperate," he said. "But desperate enough."

"Tell me."

"Watson was quiet at dinner," he said, folding his legs and resting his elbows on his knees so that he could rest his chin on his hands once more. "And after dinner he spent some time at his desk going over his bank accounts until I drove him to his room by engaging in a particularly malodorous chemical investigation. I reminded him, as we said goodnight, of his promise to you that he would sleep, but your name only made him pensive -- whereas before he has brightened at it. There was nothing more that could be done at that hour, though, and I thought that sleep would ease him. Still, I stayed busy in the sitting room, feeling restless myself and hoping to be distracted by a hunt through my books for a quotation I'd half remembered. I fell asleep on the couch.

"I woke to find Watson, barefoot and in his nightshirt, standing by the mantelpiece, which is where that case --" he indicated the one lying on the table with a gesture, "lives when it is not in my pocket. He was staring at it, holding quite still, like a man frozen in a block of ice. I said his name, meaning to tell him of the mislabelled phial. He jumped back and his foot came down on one of the books I'd left on the floor. It went out from under him and he fell onto the cane chair, which was also stacked with books, and he, the chair, and the books all went to the floor with a tremendous crash."

"I went to pick him up of course, although he didn't want the help, and had just finished mumbling something about how I must despise him for being a water of the first hypocrite when Mrs. Hudson came in, alerted by the crash. Fortunately, he will accept from her what would seem like falsity in me, and she soon had him back in bed and was berating him for going about without his slippers or dressing gown. His temperature was up, and he'd strained his leg in the fall, but between brandy and a course of headache powders we got him settled again. That was just before dawn."

"So he'd confused his words again?" I asked. Holmes would not have mentioned the mistake if it were not pertinent. "You said earlier that that did not fit the pattern," I recalled.

"Nor did it," Holmes said. "Until recently." The puzzle was clearly gnawing at Holmes, so I set to asking him questions, as I do when I help the children with their schoolwork.

"Did anything else fit the pattern you would expect? Was he trembling, or were his legs restless? Did he need his handkerchief?"

"No, none of those things. But these past weeks all of my expectations have been awry." Holmes tapped his fingers against each other. "It's possible that Sir Julian is right."

"And it's possible that he is wrong. I should think you know John better than any man alive."

Holmes snorted. "I didn't even know he'd had a brother until ten minutes before you came to our door." His shook his head. "But that's a mystery for another day. Watson never speaks of his family, not even when he is delirious. Even Murray knew little more than that his father had died at Capetown some few weeks before Maiwand."

I made a quiet resolution to find out what I could, but Holmes was right. The other question pressed harder. "And you are certain of the symptoms of the craving?" I asked.

"Even if I had not seen them confirmed in Watson's medical magazines I have seen them often enough in the man himself," Holmes said.

"Since June?"

"Several times, but with decreasing frequency as the months have passed. That's what I saw in the spring and summer of '83 as well. Eventually the spasms must have passed entirely, for I saw nothing of the sort between his return and the fresh injury."

I felt an idea dancing just out of my reach. "And the pattern you see in the confusions of speech... you said it was to do with the old wound, not the new..."

Holmes' eyes widened. "And this morning, he caught himself as he fell with both hands. And I know it hurt his shoulder by the way he carried his arm afterwards." But then his face fell. "Still that does not explain why he was at the mantel in the first place -- nor what happened on the night of our rendezvous with Thaddeus Sholto."

"One thing at a time," I said and bit my lip, trying to remember every small detail I had noticed about John during that strange and terrible excursion. There was a clue there, if only I could think of it. "Does he often carry the ebony stick with the silver handle?" I asked. "The one he had that night?" I hadn't seen him carry it since.

"He brings it whenever we're on a case at night," Holmes said. "There's a lead weight in it to give it better balance in case it must be used in a fight."

"So it's much heavier than his usual stick," said I, thinking out loud. "And he was carrying it in his left hand at first." I was certain of that. I could still feel the warmth of his right hand where it had rested in mine in the garden of Pondicherry Lodge. "But later..." I closed my eyes, the better to recall what he had looked like as he went back to the cab after he'd dropped me off at home. The light had fallen out of the hall, illuminating his silhouette, and I'd thought even then that his steps were lighter. And the stick he'd raised to the cabman... I moved my own hand in imitation. "Later he was carrying it in his right. You were not there to see, but I assure you it was true."

"I did see," said Holmes. "He carried it in his right as we followed Toby."

"But that was only so after he brought me home. And after we had seen him off, and turned to go inside again Mrs. Forrester said that the next day would be fair, and I looked and the barometer was rising. But it had been so cold and damp all the day before then -- could not John's leg have been bothering him? And when he leaned upon the stick with his bad arm he overtired it?"

Holmes gave me such a look of approval that I blushed. "Excellent! But you have not yet explained why he was at the mantelpiece before he fell this morning."

By the light in his eye I think he had gone before me, but faced with the challenge I could not ignore it. "You said the stumbling in his speech has only seemed connected with the morphine recently. Since the weather turned?" I guessed, and at Holmes' nod had the answer. "That's why then. He was at the mantel this morning because the fog was rolling in and it made his wounds ache. He wanted morphine, not because of any fiendish craving, but because he was hurting, and in his half-awake state was only looking for some means to alleviate the pain."

"I knew you had the right instincts!" Holmes exclaimed, bringing his hands together with a sharp clap. "Yes, that explanation fits the facts."

"It doesn't explain why overstraining his arm would make him confused," I felt constrained to point out.

"No," Holmes said. "But Watson might know, once it's pointed out to him. Some difficulty with circulation, perhaps. His left hand is often paler than the right." He had a bright, fierce look upon his face. "It explains why the amnesia has seemed to worsen since the rains have come as well. Watson insists on going out to walk every day, regardless of the weather -- says he must use the leg lest it atrophy -- but when his leg wound pains him he moves his stick to the left hand and so strains the bad arm. Once you have eliminated the occasions when he has only seem confused it's clear that the periods of morphine craving are diminishing, rather than increasing in frequency, just as they did the first time. Given time he could practice medicine again, just as he did before, without so great a risk of lapsing back into his addiction."

"And if he knows that a tired arm might make him confused he can be particularly careful about any instructions he gives when he is tired," I said with satisfaction. "I can sell my pearls -- they ought to bring enough to purchase a practice."

"Won't you need the money for other things?" Holmes asked. "I have a few cases I could take on -- not terribly interesting, but the clients are wealthy. With a little effort I could gift you two enough of a wedding present to meet the price of a modest practice."

"Yes, but would he take the money?" I said, feeling a sudden doubt. "How shall you get around his stiff neck?"

"I'll think of something," Holmes said. "Perhaps I'll send him as my agent off to the country while I do work in town. He can't refuse a share of the fee if he's the one did most the work." He rose to his feet and held out a hand to me. "It would mean holding off your wedding a while."

I took his aid gratefully. "The children don't want me to go before Christmas in any case. And I'll need to do something about my trousseau."

"Yes, but most of all you need to come to Baker Street tomorrow, and set his fears to rest." Holmes took my other hand in his. "I told Watson that I could not congratulate him when he announced his engagement to you -- a churlish sentiment I confess to now so that you will know the worst of me. But I felicitate you, Miss Morstan. You have chosen the truest, most honorable man in London as your husband. Do not let him slip between your fingers."

"I do not mean to," I promised him, meaning not to let this other bright knight slip away from us either.

Holmes began to put himself together. He took his case from the table and tucked it in his pocket again, sweeping his eye around the room for any other thing that he might have otherwise forgotten. I rang for the girl, who brought his hat and coat and gloves. He pulled them on quickly, trembling like a racing horse ready for the gate, so anxious was he to return to Baker Street and expound his new insight to his friend.

"Are you sure you want me to come by?" I asked. "I did mean for you both to have some respite, and you have been driving yourself quite hard."

Holmes patted the pocket with the morocco case. "Oh, I can manage for a while longer," he said gaily. "And Mrs. Hudson shines her brightest when she means to tempt our appetites. Besides, Watson will be delighted to see you."

"Shall I be there for luncheon, then?" I asked. "One o'clock? The children will have finished their schoolwork by noon."

"That should do. I'll wire you if he's not up to company." But as he reached the door he stopped and turned, sudden doubt in his eye. "Miss Morstan. This conversation..."

"Is yours to tell John of or not." I overrode him. "I am a governess to eight children Mr. Holmes, and as such I am the keeper of many secrets. This one I shall hold closer to my heart than all the rest, until you give me leave to speak."

"Thank you," he said, and was gone.

**--break--**

This story was inspired by mention of an essay called "John H. Watson and the Subclavian Steal" by Van Liere, and further nudged into being by an essay called "Sherlock Holmes' Cocaine Habit by Thomas Dalby, over at the bakerstreetdozen website. Ian Hart's performance in the BBC Hound can probably take some of the blame too. The medical ideas I had vetted by Surgical Steel, and any errors which remain are my own.

Subclavian steal is a condition where the subclavian artery is narrowed by an injury (or more usually artheriosclerosis) between the place where it arises from the aorta and the place where several arteries branch off from it in the direction of the brain. The subclavian artery continues after the branching on into the arm, changing it's name, but still providing all the circulation going down to the fingers. Because of the way fluids seek the easiest path, if a person with subclavian steal uses the arm very vigorously, the blood will be diverted from its usual circulation and the brain will lose some of the blood flow it normally requires, causing temporary confusion. I haven't actually read Van Liere's essay, mind you. But the idea does have its attractions. Ian Hart, by remembering to "protect" that left arm fed the already nibbling plotbunny that suggested that Watson did not return to work as a surgeon because he'd permanently lost some motion in the arm. If the top of the scapula is what shattered, and the shoulder had been held immobile in the vague hope of healing, a long term disability would result, but careful use over time might give the circulation at least a chance to rebuild somewhat, eventually easing away the symptoms of subclavian steal.

Dalby's essay I'll let you hunt out for yourselves.

Thanks to Surgical Steel for the medical beta (and telling me about subclavian steal), Cuthalion for the title, and both of them as well as Pompey, KMC and clevertoad for encouragement, beta comments, and helping me get this actually finished.


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